24 colorful metal shelving and storage solutions

I read recently that the steel industry has significant global production overcapacity. Seems like with the whac-a-mole global economic slowdowns, steelmakers currently have the manufacturing in place to produce 20% more steel than the world needs. This kind of situation generally leads to falling prices — and more affordable products. You know I love my steel kitchen cabinets. Powder coated steel products generally last forever — and they are so shiny and pretty — so I like ’em for both of these reasons. So, I went looking for powder coated steel home decor, focusing on shelving and storage. I found 24 goodies.

First up: Mobos Modular Home & Office Storage

Above: UPDATE: Alas: Link no longer works. Mobos Modular Home & Office Storage. I actually bought a set of mobos at a fab.com sale about two months ago, I haven’t put my 48″ white bar and three tree storage containers up yet, but will show you when I do. I can already say: The quality of the product that I receive looks excellent. In today’s world, I expect that. So the bigger story about Mobos is their overall: All of the geometric shapes you see above are actually “containers” — with “hooks” designed in as part of the steel stamping — that hang on the white bar behind. Install the bar, then hang the pieces you want. The bars come in different sizes, and the containers come in different shapes, sizes and colors. As the name says, its very modular. Made in the USA. Finally, the steel is powder coated — just like a car — so it can withstand the outdoors. However… I’d think steel would get pretty hot in the sun, so this may not be so good for tender root systems unless you use a lot of moss or something like that I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Urban Outfitters:

Urban Outfitters always seems to have cute decorative items in trendy colors — and retro is trendy right now. Woah: And do I like the shelves above! Very strings-shelf like. Very versatile. Great colors. Nicely done, UO.

Finally, floral cutout spice rack. I could use this in the bathroom, too, it’s so pretty.

From CB2:

The first place I headed online was CB2, the mod offshoot of Crate and Barrel. Sure enough, there was a good big of powder coated steel at CB2 — and
Lead photo: Array bookcase in orange. Note, CB2 is sayin’ this is for books, but it looks to me like it could also hold a collection. Just secure your whatevers with Museum Putty so they don’t get knocked off and broken. I’d expect even more to come. In addition to charcoal-ish, CB2 also has real colors, including bright orange and chartreuse. Hurray for color!

At Land of Nod:

Land of Nod also is owned by Crate and Barrel. Lots of times you can find great — colorful — things in the kids’ and teens’ catalogs. Yup.

These colorful modern organizers would work well in an office — mount one on the wall near your keyboard or principal work surface tokeep pens, the stapler and other frequently used office supplies close at hand. And look: Powder coated pink!

Oh Pam, I’m loving these. We thought we had everything in our heads settled for decorating our kitchen (no reno til way down the road, so just decor/paint), until we started in on ideas for decorating our living room recently (finally after 5 months, inspiration struck!). So then we realized our kitchen plans needed a bit of sprucing up to infuse a bit o’ modern with our vintage. This post has the gears grinding in my head now, thanks!

Ikea also has a new little steel storage cabinet, about 3 feet high and 15 inches wide, called the Josef. (At least I think it’s new–I’ve only noticed it in the current catalog which I received earlier in the week.) It comes in white, dark gray, and pink (gasp–though it looks more hot pink than Mamie pink), costs $45, and you can stack one on top of the other to make a nice 6 footer. I’ve been searching for a tall skinny cabinet for my bathroom–and Ikea does have some nice tall skinny bathroom cabinets, but I found that the boxes they come in were too unwieldy for me to haul home. This was the ideal solution…two short and light boxes, easy to assemble, feels sturdy, looks great! Had to settle for white ’cause they were sold out of the gray that I wanted, but my bathroom is mostly white so I suppose this is a better fit anyway.